


el futbol a sol y sombra

by redandgold



Category: Club de Cuervos (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-10 12:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12912351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: In Mexico City the sense of belonging doesn't depend on the people or the scenery. Everyone leaves, everything subsides. For us a street is what was (childhood, Necaxa). And that's why it matters. - Juan Villoro





	el futbol a sol y sombra

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brampersandon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brampersandon/gifts).



> Im scandalised by the lack of CDC fic!!! So here Caitlin shoves my self-indulgent wank at u merry christmas  
> (no but I watched season 1 then read ur letter and I needed to do something im sorry)#
> 
> //everything's based on S1 bc I'm a trashbag and haven't finished the rest of it yet, proceed w caution//

 

"This isn't the first time," Potro says.

He has always been taller than Moi, but it seems even further away from the physio's table. Moi forces himself to meet Potro's gaze. For a moment he can't even remember where he's supposed to be injured.

"We've had problems before." Potro runs a hand through his hair, slumps against the far wall. "It's not like we win a trophy every year, man. We just have to stick it out and try to stop fucking up. Don't we always?"

"Try to score goals," Moi says dryly. Potro glares at him but it's only for a second and then something different settles on his face; a quieter, softer anger directed at someone else.

"I know – "

Potro stops. Takes a breath. Moi watches the rise and fall of his chest like he hasn't seen it a million times over.

"I know Aitor has been difficult, but _fuck_ , Moi, forget him. Come on. Everyone knows you're our captain. You should be out there. _We_ should be out there. Not sitting here selling out for fucking cars. You love this club, man. Being a Cuervos is in your blood and all that shit."

It's only when Potro sits down that they reach the same eye level. Moi doesn't know why, but somehow it seems like it matters.

He leans forward, smile on his face. What was that shit Chava always used to say? _Cuando escribas la historia de tu vida, no permitas que nadie más agarre el lápiz._ Walter fucking Bazar.

"Don't you read the papers?" he whispers, sharp and wistful all at once. "I cheat on everything I love."

 

 

 

The first time he meets Potro he says: "Dude, you're going to win the World Cup."

It isn't even a wind-up. It's a legitimate observation, watching the way Potro plays, as delicate as a painting. He doesn't shrug people off so much as avoids them completely. Doesn't score goals so much as caress them into the back of the net, breathtaking in its simplicity. No wonder they busted their knees trying to pry him away from Boca. He puts a beautiful curled free kick into the corner of the net and the admiration rushes from Moi's lungs before he knows what he's saying.

Potro laughs. It comes out of him involuntarily, more a snort than anything else, almost child-like in its amusement. "I have fricking Messi on my team, man," he says. "That's like. Trying to get laid when it's a choice between me and David Beckham."

"Who wouldn't choose you?" Moi winks. Potro laughs again and sticks another one into the net. By the end of the next week Potro's scored two goals and Moi has brought him home for dinner. Sometimes things happen that you don't have to explain. Football, Potro will tell him later, is a simple game; you just have to love it.

 

 

 

Later is. One year. Two years. Four and Potro is still here, even though Moi thought that he'd be gone a long time ago. Doesn't know _why_ he thinks that. Only knows that he's glad to be wrong, at least for this.

He mentions it once. They've lost the final (again) and everyone's drinking or crying or sleeping it off (again). Moi is sitting on the bench in the locker room, captain's armband between his fingers, waiting for a miracle. For the referee to run into the room and yell _where is everybody, the goal was offside, we're playing again_. For the god Ximena puts so much faith in to move his ass, just once, give him a reason to believe.

Of course nothing happens. Football is a simple game, there are winners and losers, and most of the time they just end up on the wrong side.

"Hey, Moi," Potro says. He looks like he's just tried to drown himself in the shower, and the water drips down his legs, pooling in his footsteps as he pads across the floor of the locker room. "We'll go to a bar, huh? Get some drinks, start dancing, find some girls. Forget all this. You look so miserable you're starting to make me miserable, man. It's only a game."

That's what he always says – _a game_ – but Moi has long since learnt to filter out Potro's bullshit from what he's actually saying. There's a reason it's the two of them who are last to leave and no one else.

"I didn't think you'd stay," he says.

Potro blinks at him. "Eh?"

"Stay here. At Cuervos." Moi grins. "You could be doing other, bigger things, man. You were supposed to be at the World Cup."

(He'd spent the World Cup at home while his countrymen knocked Moi out, and Moi had gotten a text afterwards that said _I stayed in Mexico just to jinx it, bro_. Moi hadn't bothered replying.)

"I told you," Potro scoffs, sitting heavily next to Moi, slinging one soaked arm around his shoulders and staring into space with the air of a philosopher, "we already have Messi. He's a national underachiever, I'm only a club one."

Moi snorts at that.

"Could've been a national one if you played somewhere else."

"Bro." Potro gives him a sidelong, searching glance. Opens his mouth like he's going to say something and then closes it again like he's going to say something else. For a moment Moi thinks it's the most honest Potro's ever been with him, and then it vanishes into a haze of wide grins and an eye roll that plays it off cool. "Why would I?"

 

 

 

Moi is a planner.

A dreamer, a fantasiser, but he likes to have a grip on what he's dreaming about, likes to plot out every one of his fantasies. There's no point, he thinks, getting too carried away. He knows he is good enough for Mexico so Mexico is where he stays. He knows Ximena is too good for him so Ximena is who he stays with. Planning keeps him grounded. Doesn't let things become too out of hand. BMWs and coke and whores only get you so far, he thinks, and before all of that there is only football.

Football and the Cuervos, the team he took a chance on, the team that took a chance on him.

Everything is related. Everything is simple.

He's been here nine years, never thought about leaving, no matter how many finals they lose (again). At first it was a matter of necessity; then it became something else. _I want to win the championship_ became _I want to win the championship here_ and he never thought enough about it to question the change.

Which is why he likes Potro, even though it isn't quite the same thing. _I want to be famous_ becomes _I want to be famous here_. So they aren't kindred spirits – who the hell is – but there's an understanding that comes with the way they pass to each other and smash the balls into the net. "Fuck, man," Potro screams incoherently when he scores, one hand grabbing the crest on his shirt, the other reaching to wrap Moi in a hug, and Moi lets him, sinks into the warmth that is black and white and all in between.

 

 

 

(It is also: _I want to belong, I want to mean something_ , _I want to be remembered_.

It is also: _I want to be._ )

 

 

 

When Salvador Sr. dies Moi doesn't think a lot of it at first; sure, Chava's an idiot, but he can't be that much of an idiot, surely. There aren't many worse things to ruin than your father's legacy or a city's pride.

"Motherfucking balls of shit," Potro says six games later. That's putting it lightly.

"Relax, man," Moi says, even though there's nothing to suggest this of himself, coiled like a spring, waiting for the end. "This isn't the first time."

Potro bares his teeth. "First time for everything," he says, slaps his towel on the bench.

Talk, of course. Bluster. He wants the team to do well and rips his heart out when they don't. Chava bumbles around with as much sense as a Chihuahua trying to pretend it's an elephant, Goyo only has half his head with the team, Felix runs around trying to put out fires with Isabel. _This isn't the first time_ yet everything is so much worse than before; even Moi has lost one of his feet on the ground, tottering dangerously without Ximena beside him.

His own fault, he knows. He apologises again and again but he wouldn't have forgiven himself either. Sex and love aren't things that he equates (too much time spent with Potro, maybe) and he'd forgotten that this might not be the case for everyone else.

It is a study of the way things end. Crumbling, farcical, descending into a movie that doesn't know whether it is a comedy or drama.

"Tragicomedy," says Cuau, tapping his nose.

Tragicomedy. Moi sits back and exhales, watching Chava and Goyo argue in front of the whiteboard and knowing that they'll lose again, knowing that all he has waiting for him at home is an empty bed.

"Would it kill you to be a little more optimistic," Potro says, nudging him with his knee. "It's pissing me off, man."

Optimism won't kill him. They go out there and lose two-nil again; Moi has seen enough La Liga games to know that the crowd should be waving white handkerchiefs by now. He wonders if they blame him, if he blames himself.

"It's the captaincy," he says that night, drunk and drawling his words at Potro who shakes his head and fills his cup. "I'm captain so I have to care."

Potro snorts. "Don't lie to yourself, Moi. You're captain _because_ you care."

 

 

 

His other foot, as it so happens, is Potro.

 

 

 

(Argentina doesn't win the World Cup. They watch the final, just the two of them together, Moi ringing the doorbell to find Potro all kitted out and brighter than Moi's ever seen him, no bloodshot eyes or girls dripping off his arm. It feels too heavy to say anything so he doesn't. Just nudges his way in and presses the bottle into Potro's hands.

"Dude," Potro says, "I have, like, a million of these."

Football is a simple game: you play your heart out and the thing you want to happen will not. Potro doesn't cry, but at the end of it he slumps over on the sofa and Moi can see the way his shoulders tremble through the thin blue-and-white jersey. It hasn't got a name on the back, he realises. Potro's never talked about the players he admires, only the game in and of itself. How beautiful it is. Anonymous art still goes on the wall.

"Hey," he says. Tries _are you all right_ or _maybe next time_ or _I wish you'd played_ but nothing comes out.

Potro sits up and turns to look at him. "I would've scored," he says, his eyes a touch feverish, voice verging on the edge of prayer. "You know. We would've won."

The room is dark but the TV is still on and it casts half of his face in the light, shadows flickering back and forth. Moi suddenly thinks that Potro is one of the most beautiful people he's ever seen. Like every inch of him vibrates with some wonderful _thing_ , some boyhood purity that he must not have lost as others did.

He leans forward and kisses him. Potro doesn't move, just stills; his shoulders stop shaking and his breathing quiets. He doesn't kiss back.

Moi retreats, one hand still around Potro's neck. Tries _I'm sorry_ or _I don't know what that was for_ or _I want–_ but nothing comes out.

"Let's go get wasted," he says instead.)

 

 

 

Goyo leaves. It's Chava again, sticking his nose where it shouldn't be, and even Potro scoffs at trading pretty reporters for coaches. (Doesn't stop him from waving his dick around; not that it should concern Moi, though it does, a little.) Pausini arrives and Moi hears after the counselling that he's a weird kind of egg, but he'll take whatever he can get.

Whatever they can get ends up being the man who fucked the World Cup trophy. Happens to be the guy who scandalised half the Spanish media and has never left a club he hasn't ruined. Aitor fucking Cardoné.

He doesn't want to be a Stars Wars cliché, but he has a bad feeling about this.

Potro scrunches up his face and asks, "did you start watching that before or after they cast Diego Luna, bro?"

The first thing he had ever learnt from Salvador Iglesias Sr. was that the media was like an instrument; you left it alone when you didn't want to listen to it, and you strung and played it like a fiddle when you needed to. He knows how to work a camera. Knows that the greatest thing he can give them is to start a fight in public with Aitor and add fuel to all the shit that's already swirling around them.

 _Bad feelings aren't anything to go on,_ he tells himself, over and over. Aitor can still be good for the club, can't he? – spur them on to the playoffs, win the championship like he would have in Spain. He almost asks Chava why he'd bought a Barcelona player if he wanted to be Real Madrid, but this isn't the kind of thing he'd say.

What he does say is this: Well, he's an international star. Aitor came to contribute and all the players are here for that. I'm very happy for him and everyone. I'm very happy. I'm very.

 

 

 

_10._

 

 

 

It starts to sound like a countdown. Moi doesn’t know why people like to count to ten, or why it’s so pleasing; he asks Cuau, who shrugs like it’s none of his business. It isn’t, to be fair. This is his problem alone – _why do_ you _find it so pleasing?_ – a number and a band.

(It’s not about _pleasing_ , or even leading the team to victory and claiming the glory – it runs deeper, the way it runs in blood. Captain because you care. Aitor doesn’t care about any of this. Probably doesn’t even know the name of the town he plays in. He’s just here to have a Good Time, capital letters included, bang all the girls in Nuevo Toledo and then get out of here once he has a bust-up with whoever he wants to. Wants the number because he’s the most expensive player and deserves it, Messi in Mexico, _ten_ out of _ten_.)

“That’s your number,” Potro says, aghast. He’s the only one who says anything. Moi is starting to think that he’s the only one who understands what it means.

 

 

 

The first time he puts on the shirt is the first time in his life he's felt like he's earned something. Salvador rests a hand on his shoulder and gives him a half-smile; he leads the team out under the lights, and everything is as it should be. Like a dream from which he never wants to wake up.

It isn't something he can explain. He tries, to Ximena, the first time – she nods the way people who aren't listening do. She didn't come to that game, or any of the ones afterwards.

He sinks back into the dream. Football is a simple game. Here there are only the Cuervos; there is only the championship; there is only Potro next to him, stroking the ball with so much heart that whatever happens next almost doesn't matter.

 

 

 

_9._

They win and it isn’t Moi or Potro who scores the goal in the papers the next day. They win and the words _Aitor Cardoné_ fall out of people’s mouths like he is the fucking gift of God – no, like he's God Himself. _There are no gods in football_ , Moi says again to Tony, but he knows as well as anyone that it's a lie. They win and Moi might be sick.

 

 

 

_6._

"Is it really about Aitor?" Potro asks, once when they're out and pretending that the sorrows they drown have nothing to do with the Spaniard. He's sitting across from Moi, eyes already heavy-lidded with drink, but the way he stares is strangely observant.

Moi chugs down his drink, doesn't know if he feels embittered or chastened. "Yes," he says at first, then "no", then "I don't know."

Everything is _shit_. Aitor is a star, not a captain. Ximena is his wife, not the other girls. Chava is the boy who goes to parties, not the President. Moi doesn't know whether it's the pure amount of shit that's confusing him or something else. If it's because he's losing both feet.

 

 

 

Because he _is_ losing Potro. Somehow.

 

 

 

Potro's had dry spells before, but nothing's ever been this serious, and certainly not when the team has most needed it. Certainly not to the point of the ease with which he maintains the dry spell – open goals that the ball is jabbed past, skied tap-ins that don't seem to come back down. This is not just a dry spell. Potro kicks at the grass and Moi yells at him and everything sinks further into the shitty black hole that never ends.

They descend like freefall, like someone who's jumped off the bridge and forgotten his bungee cord. Moi closes his eyes and imagines that he's a pigeon, a pigeon on the estate of one of those rich Englishmen, blood seeping through his feathers as he falls. He can't feel his wings. They fold around him like a shroud.

He calls Potro when Chava leaves. Doesn't know who else to. Potro picks up almost immediately; "Moi," is all he says, and Moi fingers the pesos that Chava threw on the table wishing he could tear them to pieces.

"I need to tell you something, bro," he starts.

Chickens out in the end. Turns the conversation to Chava or the weather or whatever, it doesn't matter. The only reason he called was to hear Potro's voice and he does, wishes that he could be brave enough to say something or do something, wishes that he knew what that something was.

 

 

 

(On Potro's twenty-ninth birthday, Moi calls him. The line is crackling and they haven't spoken for what seems the longest time but Potro opens up exactly the same way he always has. Like a wonderful, innocent nineteen-year-old making his debut for the first time, and also not like that at all. "You're an old man now," Moi laughs, and he can imagine the face that Potro pulls.

" _You're_ an old man. Retiring yet?"

"Please, it's the World Cup next year. I have to stay fit and all that."

"Fat chance. I saw your game last week. You were huffing and puffing like Goyo after fucking someone's mother."

"You watched my game?"

Potro draws breath. Says, "How's Greece?"

"Nice. Lots of dead people. Statues and shit, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah. Ancient history. Like you in a couple of years."

"Speak for yourself."

"I'm going to be a best-selling artist by then."

"Oh yeah? You can barely draw a stickman."

"I'll turn it into a novelty act. Paint with my feet or some crap."

"Paint me as a stickman."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Come to Russia," Moi blurts out.

There is a long silence on the line.

"Isn't your kid going," Potro says, eventually.

Moi shrugs before realising Potro can't hear it. "Maybe," he says. "But it's been a while."

Me and my boy. Me and Ximena. You and me.

Potro laughs, then, a bright peal that doesn't tell him anything at all. "You're mad if you think I'd spend that much on you, bro."

Moi laughs too and puts down the phone before he says anything he'll regret.)

 

 

 

"Hey," Cuau says, pulling up in front of him. "That house looks jamming, bro." He's still driving his new Ferrari, sleek and slick as anything, sunglasses and the beautiful girl beside him. Moi can't remember whether it's the same one as the last time. He's starting to get very sick of beautiful girls.

(Ximena isn't _beautiful_ and Potro isn't a _girl_. Fuck, he thinks, what's wrong with me.)

"Yeah," he offers Cuau a strained smile. "It's Greece. Of course it's jamming."

 

 

 

_1._

It's fucking far away is what it is. He opens a can of beer and by the end of the evening he's drunk five, Ximena somewhere in the other side of Mexico and Potro still missing every damn kick he takes. The house is empty. The bed is empty. He crawls under the sheets and stretches his arm out to the other side, searching for a warmth he knows isn't there. _I want_ , he thinks, _I want I want I want_ , and his throat sticks and he doesn't know how to complete that sentence.

He thinks a lot, that night. Tries to structure his life the way it always has been. Tries to find his feet again, wherever the fuck they are. They're offering him the chance to go to Greece and start afresh and take his number back and do whatever the fuck he wants. Whatever the fuck he wants. It isn't like he's never going to play football again, is it? It isn't like he's never going to play for a club he doesn't love again, like he's never going to play with Potro again –

They're going down and Chava no longer wants him. There's a different, shinier new toy. What's the point of selling your soul to a club that doesn't want it –

He wouldn't have gone over to Canales if Potro hadn't either, and he thinks long and hard about what that means. What he's loyal to. Who he's really doing this for. Where he belongs.

Some questions aren't made for answers. He falls asleep in the empty bed, doesn't remember what he dreams about after he wakes up.

 

 

 

( _I want to belong, I want to mean something_ , _I want to be remembered_.

 _I want to be._ )

 

 

 

"Greece," Potro says, like he can't believe it.

He hasn't even told Ximena yet. Somehow it seemed more important to come here first. Potro's house is much the same as it was before the World Cup final, surprisingly clean and devoid of women. The way he chokes the word out makes Moi feel dirty all over.

"What do you care," he mutters, because Potro hasn't – hasn't done anything about Aitor except stare at his magical fucking dick, hasn't said a word to Chava, hasn't scored that goddamn goal. He sold out first, Moi tells himself vindictively, because he did, he did, and this is just Moi following his example, as he always has done.

"Of course I care, Moi," Potro snaps, kicking at the table in frustration. The leg cracks and the whole thing falls apart and it is fucking funny all of a sudden; they dissolve into hysteria, Moi wheezing, Potro tilting his head back and howling till it echoes through the house with no one home. It's fucking hilarious. There's nothing else to do but laugh.

"I have nothing left," Moi giggles, paws drunkenly at Potro's shoulder even though he's not had a whiff of alcohol for ages. "Nothing. My wife is leaving me."

"You sound like a broken record," Potro snorts. "Change it."

"My club doesn't want me."

"Self-pity isn't sexy, bro. No one's going to fuck you if you keep going on like this."

"No one _is_ fucking me," Moi points out, and laughs even louder.

He has nothing left. Football is the only thing that makes him happy and everything surrounding football makes him sad.

His hand is on Potro's thigh. Potro's arm is around his shoulder. Potro looks down at his hand, then up at him. He doesn't say anything, but he's stopped laughing. Moi clears his throat and tries to ignore the warmth that's spreading through his shorts, even though he knows it must look obvious as fuck. He remembers kissing Potro as his heart broke and wonders what should happen now that it's his heart which is breaking.

"No," Potro whispers, his voice barely audible over the pounding that fills Moi's ears.

Moi sits back. "It's all good, bro," he says.

 

 

 

Aitor says _I'd sleep with the Argentine_ and Moi doesn't even blink.

(He only feels bad that he'd completely misjudged Potro until Potro says he'd rather be a painter than play football. To Moi that's almost as much of a betrayal, though if anyone asked he wouldn't be able to explain.)

 

 

 

Football is a simple game. You try, you fuck up, you try again. You only stop trying when it stops mattering.

Moi tries, he fucks up, he tries again. It is simple. It always matters. He is a planner but more than that he is stupid and the only thing he has is a heart, a heart he pumps and keeps pumping till it gives out.

It gives out once, it is restarted once; Potro yells at him in the gym more angry than Moi has ever seen him and Moi tries to meet his eyes but never quite gets there. Yes, he thinks, and you're right, and this is my home, I want it to be. He tries. He fucks up. He tries again. Not because it matters to him, but because it matters to Potro.

(Owes him that much, at least. Hadn't it always been the two of them? – hadn't it always been about football, the Cuervos, the way sports is made for romantics?)

That's all they are, Moi thinks sourly, slamming Chava's door shut, feeling his heart give again. Romantics. Potro with all his girls and his art, dreaming of the field as a canvas, a lover. Moi with his 'my love' and tattoos and infinitesimal hope that Chava might have just said yes, that he could have dragged this team back to victory, Canales be damned, an image of the black-and-white kits, stadium ablaze with light and the roar of a crowd who would never fade away.

Potro pushes himself off the wall where he's been waiting. He knows from Moi's face it's gone to shit – never has to ask Moi anything, really, always somehow _knows_ – and they walk back to Moi's house together in silence.

They sit on the couch. Moi flicks on the TV. There's some stupid telenovela on, which is funny considering the way things are shaping up for him. Ironies upon ironies. Someone should make a TV show out of his fucking life, he thinks, just before Potro leans over and kisses him.

And Moi's seen Potro kiss loads of girls, knows that he's a good kisser, but he'd never have imagined being on the receiving end, Potro's mouth hot and hungry against his, one hand curled against his neck, the other wrapped around the fabric of his shirt. He kisses back, digging his fingers into the warmth of Potro's skin. Everything seems to be on fire. Everything seems to be fine.

Potro is the one who pulls away first, looking down with his cheeks red and breath coming in jerks. Moi lets him sit. Doesn't go near him again. Just watches him, his mussed up hair, the curve of his nose. Thinks, not for the first time, how beautiful he is.

"Thanks," Potro says. Doesn't explain. Doesn't meet his eye. He reaches a hand out, almost as if to clap Moi on the shoulder, then thinks better of it. Picks up his jacket and leaves.

The door clicks behind him. Maybe it's Moi’s imagination, but the house feels different afterwards. Like something has settled and will never quite go away.

 

 

 

He flies off to Greece before the last game. Doesn't watch it. He hears about what happens afterwards, and his throat constricts, but there isn't much to be said in the end.

 

 

 

_10._

In his dreams he doesn't leave. Salvador Iglesias Sr. doesn't die and Chava doesn't become a dickhead. He keeps the number on his back and the band around his arm. He doesn't cheat on Ximena, but he tells her, and they part as best friends. In his dreams they win the championship. And again the next year, and again the one after that. Each time Potro scores the winning goal and Moi runs to him to celebrate and Potro kisses him for the whole world to see, over and over, until their lips are numb and all they know are themselves.

 

 

 

( _I want –_ )

 

 

 

 

As it turns out, Potro does get to go to the World Cup.

They don't speak again after Moi calls him the year before. Argentina scrape through by the skin of their teeth and Moi is glad for him, even gladder that they don't end up in the same group. He's getting older and older and almost doesn't expect the call, though it does come; perhaps more out of necessity than anything else. He reads the papers and Messi is still captain, so there's that.

It's okay. It's okay. Same old story. Football is a simple game.

They draw Germany and Moi flies to Russia with cold feet and sweaty palms. He knows that they're the best in the world and he knows that he doesn't stand a chance, but that doesn't stop him from trying, does it. This of all things never stops mattering.

They put him on the bench. It's more than fine. He's just happy to be here; he looks up and it seems like the whole of Mexico is with them, filling Luzhniki with light and voice and hearts that haven't yet given out. It's one of those huge stadiums, the kind where international superstars play, eighty thousand people in a circle of perfect symmetry.

There are international superstars here, Müller and Kroos and Neuer and all that sort. He watches them warm up on the other side of the pitch and as always his thoughts return to the Cuervos, even though all of that is only a distant memory – what if an international superstar who hadn't been Aitor Cardoné had come to Nuevo Toledo, so on and so forth. The moment of bitterness rises in his throat and he shoves it down again. Aitor isn't here, and he is in Moscow, not Mexico.

Now they're lining up. Germany's kits are white and black, which makes him laugh. He turns away from the players and back to the crowd and blinks – there's a stickman with curly hair on a placard being held about five rows up, and the words beside it read _Moi, you asshole, you owe me 20000 pesos._

Potro is wearing his Argentina kit and looks so ridiculously out of place that Moi rolls his eyes and bursts into laughter. He makes sure the cameras are tilted towards the field before flashing the middle finger at Potro, who sticks out his tongue at him and flashes it back. The same thing that settled in Moi’s house years ago settles again in his stomach, this time warm and content.

The referee blows the whistle. He holds Potro's gaze just a second longer. Potro shifts into a thumbs up and a smile brighter than all of the Luzhniki put together.

Then they are off, white lines crunched under the players' boots; the pitch glows golden under the stadium lights, the smell of freshly mown grass hangs sweet in the air, the crowd surges forward singing _Mexico Mexico Mexico_ , and Moi thinks this is all that life is, really. Football is a simple game.

You just have to love it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- Title from Eduardo Galeano's "paean to football", as someone once put it, of the same name. Technically Galeano is Uruguayan but yells I love the quote and everything he writes, maudlin as it is... Quote in the summary is from God Is Round by Juan Villoro, Mexico's answer to Galeano, and probably more appropriate  
> \- [Walter! Bazar!](https://twitter.com/Walter_Bazar/status/880840715558834180)  
> \- OKAY I checked and Diego Luna was cast in Star Wars on [May 13 2015](http://variety.com/2015/film/news/star-wars-rogue-one-diego-luna-cast-1201494752/) which m e a n s it should...be accurate as a reference  
> \- Potro's age is accurate from one of the twitter bios; I'm not sure about Moi's?  
> \- All the WC 2018 information is [accurate at time of posting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_FIFA_World_Cup)  
> \- Of course I went to look up the actual price of a ticket from Mexico to Russia... of course  
> \- LOV U CAITLIN u are the Best At Everything (BAE) pls never stop writing beautiful words xoxoxo


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